Your point being? The question posed on the link is nonsensical. Employers have either HSE or LA as their Enforcing Agency - not both. The rest (the principle of charges) is all about politics.

Definitely not true Ron. We have our main activities dealt with by the HSE, but our canteen is inspected by the Local Authority. So the two enforcement agencies visit the same building for different purposes.

Jane,presumably the LA aren't enforcing H&S in your Canteen? The principle of charging under discussion relates only to H&S enforcement (by HSE). To all others -point taken!

'eg' offices, surely, or has everything else been outsourced?

I have to say I am surprised at the lack of reaction to this proposal. Can you imagine what the national press would say if the police were proposing to make up the shortfall in their budgets by charging people £133 per hour for the privilege of being investigated? Both the police and the HSE are enforcing authorities that investigate criminal offences, so what's the difference? Even the consultation documents recognise that activity by HSE Inspectors could be skewed through having to generate income. Performance indicators causing Public Services to behave badly? Surely not! If you had to make money through investigating an organisation, who would you go for? A fly-by-night cowboy that goes out of business as soon as the heat is on, or reliable income streams such as blue chip firms and the public sector who won't run away? Expect to see fewer cases taken to court, but a lot more notices. Why? Because court cases cost a lot of money. Just look at the proportion of criminal cases that are now dealt with out of court by the police. The consultation documents also recognise the potential problems in there being no independent appeals process, and worse there is a disincentive to appeal in that the time taken to administer the appeal becomes a multiplier for the original charge. Seems to me that once the HSE get their foot in the door it will be hard to get rid of them. Also I can see there being costly civil cases where big firms use their expensive lawyers against the HSE when excessive charges are levied. I hope I am just being slightly paranoid about all this, and that the current consultation process does briing some sense to it.

What worries me is this example from the consultative document: You would think once the inspector had pointed this out to the company the action should have been to ask them if they agreed that more/better guarding was needed and how they proposed to do that. But no, a specialist inspector has to be involved at extra cost! http://consultations.hse...393957.1/pdf/-/CD235.pdf Example 3: As part of an inspection, an HSE inspector raises concerns regarding the level of guarding on a bespoke piece of process machinery. The inspector has concerns that employees may be able to gain access to dangerous moving parts of machinery which could result in a significant injury. As the machine is bespoke and has been adapted specifically for the processes undertaken by the duty holder, the HSE inspector requires specialist assistance to determine what the most appropriate level of guarding should be for this machinery. On the basis of discussions with the specialist inspector the inspector forms the opinion that the machine is not adequately guarded and employees could be significantly injured. The inspector serves an Improvement Notice to ensure that the material breach of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 is remedied. The inspector subsequently revisits the site to ensure the duty holder has complied with the terms of the Improvement Notice. This was a material breach of health and safety law: Fee for intervention would apply and HSE would recover the costs from the duty holder. This cost would include all the time spent; i.e. the whole of the initial intervention when the material breach was identified, discussing the issue with the HSE specialist, preparing the letter, Improvement Notice and visit records, plus the time spent revisiting to ensure the duty holder has complied with the terms of the Improvement Notice

Judging from the negative comments there is not much support for this cost recovery initiative outside of government. I can't help wonder if this would have occurred had the HSC still be in existence. There were concerns when the HSC/HSE merged into one body that the impartiality of the HSE would be lost...which appears to be the case.

Just had a call from one of our branch managers. He's received a follow up visit from a LA inspector today to ensure that some remedial works we had carried out have been completed to standard. She is more than happy with the work, but told the BM that the LA will be charging 'call-out' fees from next year. Something tells me that either something is going on behind the scenes with regard to 3.3 of the consultation document; or she has got the wrong end of the stick. The sceptic in me can't help but lean towards the former...